Secrets at Malory Towers

Pamela Cox's Secrets at Malory Towers is a boarding school story for 9 year olds about a brand new Head Girl, a new girl nobody can quite place, and a first former heading straight for trouble.

Felicity Rivers has just been made Head Girl and she still gets a little thrill every time somebody says the words out loud. Her best friend Susan is her deputy. Her older sister Darrell had the job years ago, so it's practically a family tradition by now.

Then a new girl comes into the station cafe. Alice Johnson. Thin, mousy hair, big glasses, and so nervous she can barely get a sentence out.

Felicity looks at her and thinks she's seen her somewhere before. Then the feeling goes. Susan can't see it at all. Later, on the train, Alice falls asleep with her glasses slid sideways across her face, and Susan leans over and whispers that Felicity was right.

That's the puzzle, and it's running from the first chapter.

Out on the platform there are first formers too. Daffy Hope, who everybody agrees is a very nice well-behaved kid and who is obviously going to be nothing of the sort. And Violet, who is furious that the chauffeur couldn't drive her to school and announces it at volume while her mother goes pink beside her.

Reading it is properly cosy. Midnight feasts, tricks, exams and a great deal of moaning about exams. Nobody is ever in danger. The worst thing anybody does is be deceitful.

They talk like girls in books from the 1950s, which your reader will either adore or bounce straight off. Jolly, beastly, a duffer, scot-free. Nobody has a phone and having a chauffeur is treated as perfectly ordinary.

One thing about where it sits. This comes a good way into the Malory Towers books and it assumes you already know who June is, who Sally is and why Darrell matters. Your reader can follow it cold. It just won't mean as much.

Start at the beginning and First Term at Malory Towers is where Darrell herself arrives, standing in front of the glass admiring her brown coat and her orange belt and trying not to miss the train.